


Best Years

by dedougal



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-05
Updated: 2011-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-17 15:17:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/178208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dedougal/pseuds/dedougal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Losers at high school. Pre-movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Best Years

Cougar - Turning Eighteen

His parents were fighting again. He could hear them through the walls of his bedroom. The old familiar argument rolled through their tiny house. The neighbours on either side could probably hear it too. Carlos buried his head in his pillows and sighed. His father would leave the house in ten minutes to go to work and his mother would go to bed after her shift at the warehouse. He didn’t have to be awake for at least three more hours.

The front door slammed, making the entire building shake. That would be his dad.

School was a respite. Sometimes, the teachers didn’t even notice he was in class. They let him get his head down and carry on taking notes or follow along without bothering him. It was nice to catch up a little on his sleep during the video in Spanish. He took his lunch to the top of the bleachers and enjoyed the view over the entire campus. If he had a pair of binoculars, he often thought to himself, he’d be able to see into the principal’s office and the girls changing room from up here. He liked being able to get the panoramic view.

Carlos thought back over the argument he’d heard this morning. His dad had a point; he was eighteen soon. He’d be a man. It was time for him to be at work. He needed to be earning. His mama was also correct. There were only three more months of school. He would get a better job with a diploma. He would be able to hold his head up high and escape the neighbourhood. She used that word: escape.

There was a girl on the bleachers below him. He’d watched her sit closer and closer each day. Today seemed to be the day she made up her mind. She came and sat next to him.

“Hi.” She was perky and dark haired. Carlos looked at her sideways and nodded. “So are you, like, alone up here?”

Carlos nodded again and leaned back against the chain link fence at the top of the bleachers. The girl took it as an invitation to lean in beside him. “Are you going to Prom?”

Carlos shook his head. She seemed undeterred.

“You could come with me? I’m Suze and you’re Carlos. I know. We’re in Fourth Period Computing together. It’d be cool.” The girl’s voice hung in the hot, silent air.

Carlos shook his head again and smiled ruefully. The girl seemed to be disheartened at that and sat silent for a moment before gathering her stuff and getting ready to leave. “I just thought you were cute. I’d put out.”

Carlos felt it was a moment where he could reply, where he could agree to stay in school for that bit longer and be the type of boy who took girls to prom and graduated from high school. Then he shook his head in apology again. She stormed off until she thought she was out of sight and then she slumped against a wall.

He’d be eighteen soon enough. There were decisions to be made then. The bell rang and Carlos headed into the building. Some sort of careers fair was going on in the main hallway. A man in a uniform handed him a leaflet. He glanced over it as he headed to class.

Maybe he could please both his parents. Start earning. Escape.

 

Jensen - Bad Boys/Rebels

It wasn’t that Jake Jensen was a bad boy. He wasn’t obviously pierced. He was anti-smoking (quite virulently – there had been an incident in health class). He didn’t obviously do anything that was bad. It was just his attitude. He was unfailingly right. He was convinced of his rightness. And most of the time, he was right.

Teachers didn’t like it. They didn’t like the odd soft scoff. They didn’t appreciate the perfect essays handed in despite no attempt to participate in class. They attempted to catch him out, landed him in detention, reported him to the guidance counsellor for motivation and attitude problems on a regular basis. They called him an anaemic gerbil behind his back in the staffroom. All that seemed to do was make Jensen screw his headphones even further into his ears and maintain his aloof attitude even more.

His sister wasn’t a problem. Teachers liked her. She was on the pep squad and a member of the debate club. She participated. Jake didn’t.

That was until the Christmas his family bought a PC. Jake changed, slowly at first and then more quickly until no one could really recognise him as the kid who got As without trying. The puffy bags under his eyes went beyond purple. His hair, cropped short, started looking lank and greasy. He’d spent his lunchtimes locked in the brand new computer lab.

But Jake still wasn’t a bad boy. He didn’t swear any more than the other kids (not enough to get caught anyway) and he didn’t start fights. He wasn’t big enough, anyway. He wasn’t bullied but everyone reckoned that was down to his sister and the fact that half the football team wanted in her panties.

Then the cops showed up. At least, the rumour was that it was the cops. Ms Alderly in the admin office said that she’d never really seen badges like that before. She mainly commented on how tall the guys were and how high the shine on their shoes was. Laurie, the head cheerleader, claimed they were carrying guns but everyone knew she tended to hallucinate during one of her eating disorder phases.

All that anyone could agree on was that they were wearing dark suits and shades indoors. They marched into third period English, picked Jake out of his seat beside the window and left in a car with mirrored windows. Jake didn’t come back to school and then his family moved one weekend.

The Computing teacher (who had been a Maths teacher until he was repurposed) admitted that he didn’t quite know what Jake had done to the school computing system. There had been some extra wires and some cables that connected things that really shouldn’t be connected. No one was really surprised when the old wiring caused a fire that took out most of the Science block as well.

Laurie Peterson (nee Bradley) almost invited the twins to the class ten year reunion. Of course she was glad she hadn’t when the news reported on that dreadful accident down in that South American country.

Everyone had always known that Jake Jensen would turn out to be a bad boy.

 

Clay - Emos/goths

There are two things you can do when your parents name you Franklin after your grandfather. You can become Frank, second string quarterback and all round party guy or you can embrace the whole traditional aspect of the name and become Franklin.

There was a while when Franklin was Frank, in Junior High, where he was the best hitter in his team. He always got an invite to parties, but then pretty much everyone in the class did. Nobody was really all that different, other than the kid with attention problems and the girl who read more than anyone else.

High School was where he truly became Franklin.

There’s this girl in his French class whose legs went on forever. He knew her legs went on forever because they’re clad in fishnets and he tripped over them and her heavy boots on the way to his seat. Her dress was black, short and tight and lacy over her cleavage when she leant down to help him up (or to check her tights haven’t ripped). Her hair was long and some kind of plum colour and she had eyes outlined in black. Bright red lipstick was the only colour about her. She was the most exotic thing he’d ever seen. And the most beautiful. Her name was Nicole.

It wasn’t that he became her stalker. That implied malicious intent. He just hung around where she might hang around. He found out she was into drama and he joined the theatre group. They made him paint scenery, but that was okay because he was just a freshman. She ate lunch with her friends at the picnic tables behind the gym and he just wandered past there after finishing his lunch in the canteen. He realised pretty quickly that being the best hitter on the baseball team was not going to impress her.

Instead he found out her favourite band and spent a long time in the tiny music store on Fifth looking at the photo of the band on the album cover. He could do black pants instead of jeans. And he could get away with wearing a white (or a black) t-shirt rather than coloured ones (where did grey fit in). He stopped asking the barber for his usual and started growing out his bangs. His hair got in his eyes but he kinda liked how people stepped away from him in the hallways now. Of course, that probably had something to do with the way he’d shot up like a foot in three months. And that meant he had to go buy a new coat.

Leather totally suited him.

It was when he finally got what Morrisey was saying that Nicole kissed him for the first time. The red lipstick tasted like wax fruit but her boobs totally rubbed against his chest. They stopped dating when he refused to LARP. Her vampire buddies (he swore their red lipstick would taste of blood) were enough to persuade him that leaving town was a good idea.

There’s times Clay is glad he joined the army. He got rid of Franklin for one thing. There’s even times he’s glad that Max destroyed their lives. It means even less chance that anyone in his team will ever see some of his pictures from High School. On the other hand, it did teach him all about wearing leather black gloves.

 

Aisha - Home Schooling

Her mother did not like her going to school. She had sniffed, pointedly. “Your father would not like you to be educated with these peasants. You deserve better. You are a special child.”

Aisha never really understood what her mother was saying when she was a child. Instead she enjoyed the hours at the kitchen table, her mother leaning over her smelling of lotion and lavender from the garden. The clock would tick loudly as she stumbled over words in old fashioned books or carefully copied letters onto stark black lines.

Those days ended when her mother told her instead, “Your father wants you to go to school in America.”

Aisha didn’t know what to think of that. She liked being here in their village in the hills, her friends within easy reach. Familiar voices. Familiar smells. America was a place in movies and magazines, where famous people lived. Her mother seemed happy at the idea of a move and there was no more time for lessons at the kitchen table. School now meant a pleated skirt and lunch in a plain brown bag.

It was many years later before Aisha was taught at home again. Her father visited more as she got older. His wife had found out about her, perhaps. She had lost her accent and become a perfect American girl, track team and spring flings. She argued with her mother about boys and make up and how short was too short.

Her father watched, amused. Then he reached behind his back during one particular screaming match and slapped a pistol down on the kitchen counter. It crumpled his newspaper beyond recovery and killed the conversation. So to speak. Aisha watched her mother’s mouth pinch and a tight white line appear around her lips.

“Such aggression. I think you should learn to use it.” Her father sounded all too pleased with himself. And that was Aisha’s second experience of home schooling.

The lessons continued throughout high school. There was a certain unreality to her life. She had to wonder why her father carried a gun, even at home. She had to think about why he insisted she learn to throw a knife and strip a rifle. One summer she started to learn hand-to-hand instead of lazing by the pool.

The night of her senior prom was the night most of her questions were answered. Her mother hadn’t shown up to pick her up from the hairdresser but Aisha just got one of her friends to give her a ride home. Aisha was happy to forget her odd double life and pretend to be typical and normal. That bubble was burst the minute she dropped her keys in the bowl by the front door.

There was shouting from the kitchen. She took a few steps forward before stopping. Neither of the voices sounded like her parents. Instead she clung to the wall and slid forward hesitantly. Her mother was in one of the upright wooden chairs from the dining room. Her arms were bound behind her back and there was one of the dish towels forced into her mouth. Aisha couldn’t see her father. Two men stood behind her mother. They were the ones she had heard arguing.

A hand was gently but firmly placed over her mouth. She looked up in panic to see her father. He brought his mouth to her ear, whispering quietly. “I need you to go in there with my gun. Distract them, shoot them. Don’t speak. Just nod.”

Aisha nodded. The hand was removed from her mouth and a gun placed in her hand. It didn’t feel cold or frightening. It felt safe. Aisha nodded again, this time certain.

On the night of her senior prom, Aisha killed her first two men.

 

Roque - Reputations   
Roque was such a chemistry nerd. He knew all about the ways to blow shit  
up.

He tried to make them call him Will when he first went to high school. It never stuck. He was the tall, gangly kid with glasses who always knew the answers in science but could never really get what the teacher wanted in English or Art. Everyone said he was clever just not that smart.

He tried out for the football team. And the swim team, the wrestling team, the debate team, the orchestra, the mini-UN… He was determined to make friends. And that desperation meant that pretty much everybody ran in the opposite direction.

When the dust cleared, there was him, William, and Ira, the five foot nothing, acne ridden fat kid who just screamed “bully me”. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement: they were not alone together. William spent Friday nights with his mom and sister watching TV and studied hard. He was clever.

Chemical formulae were the best. They had patterns and names and you could always tell how they were going to react. They were consistent. William knew which ones would stay calm in proximity to each other and which ones would react in a more exciting manner. A careless teacher let him have access to the senior lab one day and William just knew what he had to do. The teacher took early retirement, the school was evacuated for a week and William, well, they just said he wasn’t that smart and it was all an accident. Who knew that mixing those harmless chemicals would create poison gas?

William did. He was clever.

When the speaker at the Awards Dinner made a reference to “best days of your lives”, William sneered. When she talked about memories and friendships, William stopped listening. He took the trophy, smiled for his mom’s camera, cashed the cheque and made plans.

His mom was worried about college. There were scholarships that he’d got and loans he could take out. He could get a job too. The numbers tumbled in his head, columns haunting his dreams. He couldn’t make them form a pattern, couldn’t make them line up and react in the way he wanted. She still wanted him to go. First member of the family to go to college and all.

Turns out they can refuse to let you graduate if you are perhaps responsible for a series of small, controlled explosions throughout the building. It wasn’t like anyone was hurt seriously. William knew what he was doing. He was clever. And no one could prove anything. He was smart. And the clique ridden rathole that had been his living torment for the past four years was finally, irrevocably, gone.

Good memories. Something he’d always remember.

As he signed the form at the recruiting office the next day, the man shook his hand. “Thanks for serving your country, William.”

William thought about that for a moment. He had another chance here to start afresh, to be who he wanted to be not just the best he could be. The army might pick on him and make his life hard, but once he was in, that was it, he was in. “Call me Roque, sir. Roque is just fine.”

 

Pooch - Study Buddies

“She is smoking hot. And totally gagging for me, obviously,” said the guy currently hiding behind his locker door. Linwood Porteous slammed the door shut and glared out the guy. Of course it had to be Bradley Morris, number one self-proclaimed big man and all round prick. “What you looking at, Por-tay-ous?” he singsonged.

Linwood had a comeback. Sure he did. Instead he gathered his books and headed towards class. It was there that he met the girl that he reckoned Bradley the Ass had been talking about. This new girl was keeping her head down, ignoring the whispers going on behind the other girls’ hands. Her hair was hiding her features, but Linwod could make out the curve of her cheek, the elegant sweep of her neck, her slender body.

His love was not crude. His love was pure.

“Jolene?” called the teacher, looking around the busy room for her. She raised her hand.

Linwood had a name now. Jolene. Like the Dolly Parton song. He didn’t really like that song – he was more into old school R’n’B – but he liked that she had that name. It suited her. It was pretty. And it turned out that she was going to be in the seat directly in front of him throughout this entire lesson. That was a mixed blessing when Ms Whyte called on him and he’d been busy trying to work out if the bra Jolene was wearing had a back fastening strap or not. Everyone had looked at him when he mumbled out the wrong answer.

After shop (he liked shop) and lunch, fate decreed that he should run into her again. This time in Science. Linwood liked science. He liked discovering how things were put together. He was good at it. And he totally had a spare seat beside him here too.

Sure enough, Mr Danquah made Jolene sit beside him. This time, Linwood decided, he could speak to her. “Hi!”

“Hey,” she answered. She seemed shy.

“So how’re you enjoying your day?” Show interest in her life. That was something all his momma’s Cosmos seemed to advise.

Jolene laughed and then reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Fine, thanks. So, you any good at this science stuff?”

“Totally top of the class.” Jolene looked around. At the back of the room, Mikey Peters was digging the point of his compass into the desk – probably carving a swastika, Lauren was putting on her lip gloss and Sarah was flipping through a magazine under the desk. “For real. I like knowing how things work.”

Jolene nodded. “I kinda struggle with it. I like History though.”

“Not my favourite subject. We should totally pair up, help each other out. You can be my study buddy.” Linwood said this, coolly, trying to keep his excitement under control. He had a plan now. A great plan. A plan that would beat all other plans.

Jolene thought about it for a long time. “What’s your name again?”

“Linwood Porteous. But call me Linwood. Everyone does.” Linwood felt the flash of embarrassment he always associated with his first name pass across his face.

“I like it. It’s unique.” Jolene smiled, then. “You can tell me all about it during our first study session.”

Linwood hid a fist pump under the desk as Mr Danquah dimmed the lights and switched the projector on. He could work on his plan during the video. At the moment, it was study buddies, fall in love, get married. He just needed to work on the finer details.

Max - college acceptance/ denial letters

There were two piles of letters on the table. He looked at them both before dividing the smaller pile into three further ones. The girl on the opposite side of the table popped her gum and looked at the piles quite disinterestedly.

“Nope. You’re going to have to explain the system to me,” she said finally.

He neatened the edges of the large pile. “These are the acceptances I am not interested in. I felt the need to have them here so I could see the whole picture.”

“Makes no sense, but whatever.” She flipped her hand. “Keep going.”

“Of the colleges I feel would be most advantageous to me, I have divided them into ones offering full, partial or no scholarships.” He tapped each pile in turn, then leaned back.

The girl gave him a minute to continue. “And?”

“And what?” he replied. He leaned forward to adjust the leftmost pile so that they were all aligned parallel to each other. “Do you want a drink?”

“I got myself one when I came in, since you never offer until you want something.” She didn’t seem annoyed though. Instead she leaned forward, bringing her arms in front of her to deepen her cleavage and fluttering her eyelashes. “Tell me which one you’re going to accept.”

“I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you,” he said. There was a long pause before he barked out a short, curt laugh.

“You sound like something out of those James Bond films you made me watch.” She tossed her hair, annoyance fleetingly passing over her features. “It’s just as well you’re cute. Otherwise you’d be too weird for me.”

“You know you only hang around me because you know I can make you Prom Queen.” He headed for the fridge. “Sure I can’t get you a drink?”

“I still don’t get how you’re going to do that, you know. Are you going to run a kickass campaign?” She was watching the piles of letters again, trying to puzzle them out.

“Campaign? Not at all.” He came back to the table with a glass of ice tea. “I know their secrets and I’m going to be in charge.”

“Of the Prom? Okay.” She looked confused for a moment. “Do you want to go up to your room and make out? We have to celebrate you getting accepted to all those places.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, considered it. “I guess you do have a point there. Smart girl.”

She was already loosening the top of her halterneck when she started to climb the stairs. “But which college are you going to go to? I mean, who wouldn’t want a full ride, right?”

“There’s that. But there’s one other thing I have to take into consideration.” He opened the door to his room. She wriggled out of her top and turned to face him, arching her back to show him her pink lacy bra. He appreciated it for a moment.

“What other thing?” she asked, turning to climb onto the bed.

“Nothing important,” he replied, bending down to kiss her. Everything was forgotten for a while. He was back at the table as she left. There was a fourth pile on the table now, lying perpendicular to the others.

He locked the door behind her and returned to his letters. She was more right than she knew. He was a bit obsessed with the James Bond films he made her watch. It was just as well she’d never looked at his bookshelves too closely. He opened the letter on the top of the new pile. An acceptance offer, partial scholarship, Ivy League. Nothing to really distinguish it from the other letters on the table.

Except for one fact that wasn’t written down on paper.

This college had something of a reputation as a recruiting hotspot for the CIA. He allowed himself a genuine smile.


End file.
